Esperanza (50 page)

He seemed astonished that she asked. “Don’t you worry about it, mate. Ed Granger knows what he’s doing.”

It troubled her that Granger spoke of himself in the third person. “I appreciate everything you’ve done. But you didn’t answer my questions.”

“We’re renting a four-wheel drive at the hotel. We can trade off on driving. It’ll take seven hours and we can’t do it at night. We’ll start at first light. It’s three hundred and ten miles.”

The minicalculator in her brain did some quick division. “That means we’ll average about forty-five miles an hour, Ed.”

“On these roads, with switchbacks, landslides, iffy weather, that sounds about right.” In the waning light, the tattoo that climbed from his hand up his arm seemed to be dancing, laughing. “Hey, mate, trust me. Even if we could fly closer, we can’t do it in the dark and the roads are impossible at night.”

“Manuel Ortega drove from the bodega to Esperanza at night.”

“Manuel’s a goddamn nutcase.”

Manuel is the form my dead father uses in Esperanza, you jerk.
She didn’t like being herded and that was how this felt—Granger calling the shots, controlling where, how, when.

“If you knew we were in Otavalo,” said Maddie, “why didn’t you just pick us up there?”

“I didn’t know where you were until I got a call from Kim Eckert.” He glanced at Maddie, as if really noticing her for the first time. “And no one told me you and your grandmother were along for the ride.”

“We’re not along for any ride,” said Lauren. “We’re here because we’re family.”

“I didn’t mean that in any sort of demeaning way, ma’am.”

“You could’ve flown into town,” Tess said. “And saved us a harrowing escape.”

“I’m all for the cause, but I don’t do Otavalo. I don’t like leaving Esperanza. But Illika Huicho asked if I’d help, so here I am.” A big PR smile from Granger. “Do you remember her?”

The leader of the Quechuans. “Yes. So what’s the plan after we get to Esperanza?”

“The plan?” He blinked rapidly, as if he didn’t understand the question. “What do you mean?”

“The plan. You’ve gone to all this trouble—but for what? Why?”

“I’m not the guy to ask.” He strode on ahead of her, swinging his long arms.

Lauren and Maddie fell into step beside her. “Thoughts?” Lauren asked.

“He makes me uneasy,” Tess said.

“I don’t trust him,” Maddie said. “He has a chopper, for crissake. He could’ve picked us up in Quito and flown us to Esperanza when the winds were calmer. Or something.”

“I just don’t like him,” Lauren said. “Do you think he has a
brujo
inside him?”

Her mother’s question spoke tomes about how far they had come in terms of accepting what was possible. “My wrist doesn’t burn, so I don’t think it’s that. Maybe it’s just how he is. He’s got an agenda. I think he and his agenda have bothered me since the beginning.”

“What do you want to do?” her mother asked.

“We’re going to get Granger roaring drunk and pump him for information.”

Maddie snickered. “And then what?”

“We’ll find our own way to Esperanza.”

Lauren rubbed her hands together like a gleeful kid. “Now you’re talking my language.”

Inside the terminal, Granger filed paperwork with airport security about the chopper, paid the tie-down fees, then they took a cab to Hotel Inca, Tulcán’s equivalent of upscale. Not a Hilton or a Radisson, for sure. But the property featured a restaurant, wireless Internet, a swimming pool, a thermal spring. It seemed that the comforts of home were intended to lull them into a complacency they might not feel otherwise.

Once they were in their room, Tess took a quick shower, put on clean
clothes, then counted out cash from their reserves, money they’d carried hidden on their bodies and in their packs. She went downstairs and bought supplies in the hotel store—bottled water, fresh fruit, canned goods, flashlights, matches—and a bag to put everything in. Then she approached the young Asian man at the desk and asked about the rental car reservation under Ed’s name.

The man found it readily enough, a Ford Expedition, four hundred a week, to be returned in Tulcán. Bad gas mileage, Tess thought, and counted out the cash. “I’ll need a map, too. We’re headed to Esperanza first thing in the morning.”

He brought out a map, drew a red
X
on Tulcán, another
X
on Esperanza, then drew a line into the mountains, an erratic zigzag that looked like a two-dimensional roller-coaster track. “Carry extra gas with you. Even though there’re stations, the pumps are often dry because the
campesinos
hoard gas for their generators. I can include a ten-gallon container in the price.”

“I appreciate it.”

“There’s a GPS in the car, so you can recheck the mileage and the route I’ve drawn. There may be a lot of traffic. In the last two days, I’ve rented twelve four-wheel-drive vehicles—what we usually rent in a week. All of them seem to be headed to Dorado, the last town before Esperanza.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“The summer solstice, the Festival of the Sun, when the Quechuans and the Incas honored the sun god Inti. There’ll be free concerts, free food, that kind of thing. A hotel guest gave me a blog address where more information is available.” He handed her a slip of paper. “Here, you can check it out in the computer room. The Ford’s silver and it’s parked at the right side of the building. The gas container will be inside. Here’s the key, I just need to see your driver’s license and passport.”

She set both on the counter, picked up her bag of supplies, and hurried toward the computer room. “Be right back.”

The blog, liberationblogspot.com, appeared to have been started by a woman named Vivian Ortiz, whose parents had bled out simultaneously on a beach in Guayaquil in 2003. Once the coroner had ruled out a virus or bacteria and determined that her parents had died of cerebral hemorrhages, she’d started the blog to find out if anyone else had experienced something similar. When reports had started pouring in from all over South America, her blog had expanded to a website, where readers posted their own stories.

Tess clicked around on the site, noting the map of red dots where every bleed-out had occurred, a running tab on the number since 2003: 22,272. The latest blog entry had been made two days ago.

As longtime readers of this site know, we intentionally avoid words & phrases that would enable our enemies to discover this site by doing a Google search. We have used codes for those buzzwords. That said, you’ll understand the following announcement.

The time has come. We will be gathering in Dorado on June 21. We encourage you to arrive a day early as turnout is expected to be high. Dorado has only 2 hotels.

A campground will be available in a pasture at the south end of town. General parking will be in the high school football field NW of downtown. Signs will be posted. For subscribers, I’m posting a list of necessities
here
. Feel free to pass this info on to everyone on your list whom you trust. Bus transportation is listed
here
. If you’re driving your own vehicle, we encourage you to follow buses. Safety in numbers. We’ve waited a long time for this moment, people. Let’s make it count. Now isn’t the time to be afraid or intimidated. It’s up to us to do what is right, to end the tyranny that has torn apart so many lives.
Sí, se puede.

Viv

It sounded like a call for grassroots war against the
brujos.
But in what sense? To fight them? With flamethrowers? Even if their army numbered in the tens of thousands, where would they get enough flamethrowers?

Tess printed the latest blog entry, clicked to a map of Ecuador. She located Dorado, a town of 21,000 located at 7,200 feet, with the Río Palo less than a quarter of a mile to its north, Esperanza fifty miles beyond that—and six thousand feet up.

She clicked the link for bus transportation. Fourteen Ecuadorian cities were listed, with at least two buses leaving from each city. All buses were identified as Dorado 13. The synchronicity of that number prompted her to scroll down the page of cities to check for Tulcán. Sure enough, two Dorado 13s had left Tulcán at seven this morning and another two were scheduled to leave at ten tonight. She scrolled up the list again, clicking cities at random. All buses traveled in pairs.
Safety in numbers.
And a greater choice of host bodies for
brujos.

Her cell rang. It had been so long since she’d had any cell service that
she’d nearly forgotten about the phone. The message in the window read:
You have 10 new voice mails.
All were from Dan, pleading for her to turn herself in, her status as a fugitive could add another fifteen years to any sentence she received, she couldn’t stay on the run forever. He was in Quito and would help her cut a deal.

“Yada, yada,” she said, and deleted all the messages.

She picked up her printed sheets and returned to the front desk, where the clerk returned her passport and driver’s license. Tess called Ed’s room from the lobby and invited him to dinner. Then she called her room, and when her mother answered, Tess told her she’d rented a car and they should load up before dinner with Granger. “Look for a silver Expedition on the north side of the building.”

Ed didn’t get drunk easily: a bottle of wine with dinner, most of which he drank; a couple of beers, then several shots, one after another. By the time he was into the shots, his tongue had loosened considerably. He ranted about the stupid chaser plan to enlist human beings to do what chasers did, guiding transitionals into the afterlife. “I mean, mates, are you kiddin’ me? How many people can see transitionals, much less talk to them and have the knowledge to guide them?”

“No one in Esperanza whom Ian and I encountered had any problem interacting with us,” Tess remarked.

“Only because you were in Esperanza.” His words slurred now, so the sentence actually sounded more like,
Oncause yuh speranza.
“Woulda been a lot different if you’d ended up somewhere else, I can tell you that. But see, someone got the bright idea that if you and Ian survived your near-death experiences, you’d be able to see and talk to these souls, and could take over some of what chasers do, then more transitionals could be recruited and pretty soon there would be hundreds or thousands of helpers worldwide who would be offering guidance to transitionals at the scenes of disasters, wars . . .” He threw back another shot. “That would free the chasers to tend to the
brujo
bastards. Me, I don’t see how it’s going to work. Right now, Dominica’s tribe is the largest we know of and it’s pretty clear that
brujos
worldwide outnumber chasers.”

“In other words, you’re saying that evil is winning,” Maddie said.

“You got that right,” Granger murmured.

Lauren piped up. “Then why don’t you amass an army and fight them?”

“Fight them?” He threw out his beefy arms. “How?”

Tess couldn’t let that pass. “I seem to remember you and your gang racing down from the posada with shovels and rakes and flamethrowers, Ed.”

“Sure, we can do that. A small group of
brujos,
no problem. But there’re tens of thousands of them around Esperanza. We aren’t equipped to deal with
that.
”

“Excuse me, Ed, but it seems to me that most of the people in Esperanza who have stayed now live defensively, in fear of the
brujos,
terrorized by them, deluding themselves that they can live their lives around them. Why not come up with some comprehensive plan to take them out?” Tess asked.

“For crissake.” For the first time, Granger’s voice held a sharp edge of irritation. “You can’t
take out
what’s dead.”

“Sure you can,” Maddie said. “Head to head, toe to toe, one to one. Your flamethrowers are the weapon of choice? Great, supply flamethrowers to every Ecuadorian who has lost a loved one to a
brujo.
Galvanize them, organize them, get them all to Esperanza at the same time and wipe them out. But that takes too much work, doesn’t it, Mr. Granger. Just like flying us into Esperanza would take too much work. You can do it, I know you can. But the status quo is easier, isn’t it. I frankly think you assholes enjoy being victimized by the
brujos.
You’re more united in your struggle
against
a common enemy—the commies in the fifties, the establishment in the sixties, Nixon in the seventies, the Muslims and gays in the twenty-first century. There always has to be some amorphous enemy, doesn’t there. Jesus, you disgust me. I wouldn’t ride to the mall with you and I sure as hell won’t endure three hundred miles in a car where you think you’re in charge. You’re pathetic.”

Maddie punctuated her soliloquy by shoving her chair away from the table, grabbing her bag, stalking off. Tess felt like cheering, Granger looked to be on the verge of a stroke, and Lauren tried not to explode with laughter. Neither Maddie nor Lauren had seen the blog yet.

“
That
young woman,” Ed said, stabbing a stubby finger after Maddie, “has some serious issues.”

“She has an excellent grasp of history.” Lauren tapped the back of Granger’s hand. “And if we’re going to talk about issues, let’s start with your alcohol problem, Mr. Granger. Ten years of
brujo
attacks have reduced you to a caricature. We’ll find our own transportation to Esperanza. Thanks so much for the chopper ride. It was my first and thoroughly enjoyable.” Then she, too, pushed away from the table and walked off.